INTERNET AUDIO ADVISORY December 15, 2000
"SOUNDS" OF OUTER SPACE NEAR JUPITER NOW ONLINE
NASA's Cassini spacecraft, approaching Jupiter, is detecting waves in the
thin gas of charged particles that fills the space between the Sun and its
planets. The waves are in low radio frequencies, which have been converted
to sound waves to make the patterns audible.
A brief audio clip is available at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/acoustic .
The audio clip comes from waves that were detected by Cassini on Dec. 8,
at a distance of about 23 million kilometers (14 million miles) from
Jupiter. They are likely to have derived from an interaction of the
magnetic field that surrounds Jupiter and the solar wind of particles
speeding away from the Sun, said Cassini science team member Dr. William
Kurth of the University of Iowa, Iowa City.
Cassini, a cooperative mission of NASA, the European Space Agency and the
Italian Space Agency, will pass Jupiter on Dec. 30 for a gravity boost to
reach its ultimate destination, Saturn. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif., manages Cassini for NASA's Office of Space Science,
Washington, D.C. JPL is a division of the California Institute of
Technology, Pasadena.
